Between foundations, mystical visions, and apostolic expectations. María Magdalena de la Cruz, the Poor Clares of Macao, and the female construction of a global Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century Iberian Worlds

Abstract

This essay aims to explore the role that women, and in particular nuns, played in the Asian edges of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in shaping a sort of Iberian Catholicism. It examines the terms and conditions that defined their forms of religious life and their interactions with the social and cultural contexts in which they were integrated. Not only does it consider their ability to influence the public sphere through visions, writings, and devotions that ultimately contributed to strengthening religious identities and political ties between the territories of the Portuguese and the Spanish monarchies. It also raises questions about the missionary contexts that encompassed these women and the way in which they arranged their obligations of seclusion and prayer with mobility and a clear vocation to participate in the tasks of conversion. To this end, the research analyzes the life of the Poor Clare nun María Magdalena de la Cruz, who, in the 1620s, travelled from Seville to Manila, participating in the well-known expedition led by Jerónima de la Asunción. In 1633, she moved to Macao to establish a new monastery in this Portuguese city of Southern China, and, in 1644, spent some time in Cochinchina, where she was able to partially fulfil her apostolic expectations. Known for her visions, she recorded her contemplative experiences in an extended immaculist treatise entitled Floresta franciscana, which she composed under the auspices of her confessor.